BRICKS and mortar are back on the council agenda after planners brought to an end a four-year house building ban.

Macclesfield has witnessed a flood of new planning applications since the moratorium finished last month.

Planning officers have been swamped with applications from eager developers keen to progress proposals they have been sitting on for up to four years.

One effect of this has been extra-long meetings for Macclesfield Borough Council’s in-demand planning committee – its first after the ban was lifted lasted six hours.

Councillor Roger West, who sits on the committee, said: "This could be the way of things to come because the housing moratorium is being relaxed.

"People were holding back on putting in for planning permission, hoping to get more success now than a few months ago."

He added: "The (recent) planning meeting was one of the longest I have ever been to.

"Some people were having to leave, going home for tea or whatever the reason.

"It was quite tiring and I can certainly appreciate it is a long time for members of the public to wait around for their application to appear."

John Knight, Corporate Manager for Planning and Development, said: "I am anticipating that meetings will be longer. There were 15 items on this agenda and I am expecting around ten to 12 on the next one.

"We continually monitor the workload between the planning committee and planning sub-committee and changed the split last year as the sub-committee was, for a time, busier than the main committee.

"It will take some time for the effects of the new housing situation to be seen, so we will not rush into any further changes just yet."

Mike Kennedy, managing director of Hillcrest Homes, which develops in Prestbury and Poynton, said: "It is great news for when market conditions pick up, which they will in due course.

"Enforcing the moratorium was a mistake which directly influenced the inflation of house and land prices and kept people off the property ladder.

"Limiting the supply of new homes and building land when demand for housing was high meant that land and property owners were in a position to command a premium price."

An MBC spokesman said the current increase in applications was "not a cause for concern" for the planning department.

"We have had an influx of planning applications that is tempered somewhat by the bite of the credit crunch, so we are not as swamped as we might have been," she added.